World’s largest wind turbine goes live in British waters

(Photograph: Steve Morgan/the Guardian)

Roughly five miles from the mouth of River Mersey thirty-two wind turbines are producing energy. These new turbines are bigger and better in every sense. Coming in at 195m tall these metal behemoths stand taller than Big Ben, London Eye and even the Gherkin skyscraper. The new and improved turbines are 37% bigger than a typical turbine and produce over double the energy.

Dong Energy the Danish company behind these marvels owns nine offshore wind-farms around the UK with an impressive generation capacity of 2.4 Gigawatts. The new addition to the Burbo Bank windfarm only bolsters these stats. To put it in perspective one rotation of these turbines will produce enough energy to power a house for over 24 hours.

The choice to build bigger turbines was in reaction to the Governments support only being continued if Dong found ways to cut costs. Rather than building smaller turbines the company opted for smaller quantity of larger turbines as it saved money in foundation construction.

Dong Energy is also pushing forward in Germany with its recently approved bid to build the world’s first subsidy-free offshore windfarm. Although country manager Benjamin Sykes did not allude that the same idea will be used for UK’s locations, he said that the Burbo Bank is “part of the journey to a zero-subsidy windfarm”.

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We are a firm of Accredited Code Assessors, SAP Assessors & Energy Surveyors located in Dorset. We are using this blog as a way of promoting environmental awareness with stories ranging from green energy to eco-architecture.